How a person uses their phone tells you more about them than their shoes, desk, and closet combined. Their line of work, their technology views, their social preferences and their communication style.

This is why I find it important to extend personal values to include my phone and apps.

My Phone and App Philosophy:

In July 2007, I purchased the original iPhone. It represented innovation in a way no other phone did at the time. It felt sleek, intuitive, technologically superior, and cool. It was a tiny slice of the future you could purchase and carry around with you in your pocket. If you wanted a “smartphone” there was no other choice. And that was okay.

But that was then, and this is now. For me, the iPhone has come to represent the status quo. It’s still sleek and intuitive. But it no longer feels new, technologically superior, or cool. In some ways, it has come to represent anti-innovation. It builds on the same formula, each model as predictable as the last.

Which is why, in 2011, I switched to Android. Android, especially at first, was a letdown. The features were comparable and the specs sometimes outshined the iPhone. But it lacked polish. And the PlayStore was full of poorly designed, poorly executed apps, riddled with advertisements.

But that was then, and this is now. As Android usage has increased, so too has the quality of the Android interface and available apps. Much of this aided by Google’s release of material design standards, and the continued improvement of the hardware powering our phones.